He handed out five walks, needed 121 pitches to record 19 outs, and left with a pair of runners on base before the bullpen bailed him out.

And overall through his first three starts Darvish has been effective without being hugely impressive, going 2-0 with a 3.57 ERA despite nearly as many walks (13) as strikeouts (14) and a total of 32 baserunners in 17.2 innings.

Thanks to the pitch-by-pitch data at Brooks Baseball we can take a deeper look at Darvish’s arsenal so far and his 333 total pitches break down as follows: 156 four-seam fastballs, 99 sinkers, 84 sliders, 60 cureveballs, 54 cutters, and 10 pitches classified as either a changeup or splitter.

Not many pitchers have five different pitches they throw regularly, but that diverse repertoire certainly matches the scouting report on Darvish from Japan. As for how fast he’s throwing them, Darvish has averaged 94.4 miles per hour with his fastball and 93.4 mph with his sinker. His slider clocks in at 83.2 mph and his curveball at 76.6 mph.

He’s gotten hitters to swing at 42.9 percent of his pitches and they’ve made contact 81.8 percent of the time, both of which are worse than the MLB average. That matches what my eyes have told me watching Darvish’s starts, which is that his raw stuff is very good but his command has been much shakier than expected and the hitters’ ability to lay off his numerous off-speed pitches has been surprising as well.

Having watched a fair amount of both Japanese/Asian and MLB style baseball, I think one of the toughest adjustments Japanese/Asian pitchers have had is to the strike zone. MLB strike zones are very unforgiving, while Japanese/Asian (and minor league) strike zones have a little bit more give to them. At least that’s my hypothesis.

In the U.S., he doesn’t have to worry about Godzilla, Rodan, or Ghidorah attacking the stadium, so he’s probably not as concerned about being efficent with his pitch count. Geez, don’t any of you watch movies from the 60’s and 70’s? Wake up and learn what’s happening in other countries, for God’s sake.

Right now, Darvish is “average.” I think he will improve but he gets behind most batters and walks ~ especially to lead-off batters ~ will kill a team. Yet he is 2-0 on a team with the best record in baseball. But sfm073 has a point. Get rid of the “cafeteria” and settle on a menu of his best three to four pitches. He’ll develop faster and SO vs BB will improve quickly.

Years of watching young pitchers come up through the ranks at Oakland and then get traded away fully formed have taught me two things:

– Darvish’s stuff is exceptional, definitely not average
– He’s having command issues right now, mainly (I think) because MLB lineups are much deeper than what he saw in Japan.

In other words, he isn’t pitching with the same confidence as he did in Japan because he has to be careful with every hitter in the lineup, especially against a team like Detroit, unlike the lineups in Japan which have some “easy” outs in them.

We don’t know if he will gain the necessary confidence. But with his stuff, he can become a great pitcher, if his command improves to the point where he can throw strikes consistently where he wants to throw them.

I heard some folks commenting on this last week, and its an interesting debate. The comments were in comparison to Daisuke Matsuzaka, and how he fared after being brought over.
1) Like Darvish, much of Matsuzaka’s success in Japan came from him throwing a wide variety of pitches.
2) Darvish apparently throws not just a fastball, slider and a curve, but at least two variations of each of those pitches. Even if a hitter could tell a slider was coming, it might not look like the last one he saw. You have to accept that this smorgasbord of pitches had more than a little bit to do with his success.
3) Forcing Matsuzaka to drop the variations of his core pitches and focusing on his three or four best might well be at the core of why he’s turned into the pitcher he’s been in the last few years; good, at times very good, but not great. not worth the $$ Boston shelled out to get him and keep him. There’s a slew of American/South American pitchers who’ve achieved similar success at a lower cost to their clubs (excluding, of course, the Barry Zito factor…).
4) The concern in Rangers Fandom is that, forcing Darvish into a four or five core pitches will result in a pitcher that is just, ‘high-end mediocre”.
5) Factor into all of this the pitching mantra of The Old School Brother; throw strikes. Pitch to contact. Don’t worry about the ball going into play, you’ve got seven guys behind you to take of that. Keep us in the ballgame, and let the offense rack up the runs.
So….while, in the micro-economic analysis of what Darvish is and the pitcher he’ll evolve to in The MLB, it’s likely he won’t be setting the world on fire. However, he does seem to be gaining control. He keeps the ball down and doesn’t seem to be getting behind a lot of hitters. Lots of potential, there. With that, he’s likely to fit perfectly into the overall club that Daniels, Ryan, et al. have engineered.

after 3 games and a 2-0 record, you need to give him some SLACK. At the VERY least, lets wait until after we win the world series this year to see how Darvish pans out. If ANYONE knows about pitching, it is Nolan Ryan. I think Darvish needs to get about 10 games under his belt to start calming down and throw with confidence. Rangers win will the WS this yeah and Nap will be the MVP.

Admittedly…I am ignorant with regards to Japanese Baseball.
But it seems that I have often heard their strike zone is very liberal.
If true…this would be a very good reason as to why he is having trouble locating his pitches AND why MLB players are making contact with so much regularity.
When compared to Japenese Baseball…he essentially has to put it on a tee for the MLB players.
Once/if he adjusts to MLB’s strike zone we should have a much better idea of how good his stuff is.

Reminds me of the kind of stats you would see from a rookie getting used to the league and new fields. However japanese players are not rookies even though they are eligible for the award. I expect he will will recover faster and pitch better heading into the second half. Of course i do expect him to wear down and pitch very little aftyer 120-130th game of the season if they do not watch his innings and workload. I think texas has a great pitcher here.